ICN has learned that MSNBC will be launching its Battleground America mid-term election coverage next Wednesday September 6th. Once again, MSNBC’s Chris Jansing will be bouncing around the country (I’m hearing at least 16 states) starting off in New Haven, Connecticut where the Joe Lieberman/Ned Lamont race is going on.

MSNBC is pulling out all the stops and bringing in NBC’s heavy hitters. Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, David Gregory, Campbell Brown, Lester Holt, and Joe Scarborough will all be featured along with Jansing throughout the day. Ads for this were already spotted by the MSN MSNBC board today…

P2+ Total Day
FNC -832,000 viewers
CNN - 583,000 viewers
MSNBC - 236,000 viewers
CNBC -158,000 viewers
HLN - 223,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC - 1,407,000 viewers
CNN- 1,099,000 viewers
MSNBC - 316,000 viewers
CNBC - 141,000 viewers
HLN - 369,000 viewers

25-54 Total Day
FNC- 280,000 viewers
CNN - 191,000 viewers
MSNBC - 106,000 viewers
CNBC - 50,000 viewers
HLN - 102,000 viewers

25-54 Prime Time
FNC - 405,000 viewers
CNN - 275,000 viewers
MSNBC - 129,000 viewers
CNBC - 66,000 viewers
HLN- 142,000 viewers
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CNN announed that The Situation Room will be focusing on Campaign 2006 next week as the Mid-term election season gets underway…

With Labor Day marking the traditional start of the mid-term election season, CNN’s The Situation Room will air a week of reports from the network’s top political correspondents delving into the variables that will determine the political balance of power in the U.S. Congress.

Senior political correspondent Candy Crowley will report on the major races and issues throughout the week. First, Crowley will provide an overview of the 2006 political landscape and how Iraq and the war on terrorism are affecting President George W. Bush as well as Republican and Democratic candidates. On Thursday, Sept. 7, and Friday, Sept. 8, Crowley will examine the role of “values voters” – those who choose candidates based on high-profile social issues – and the consequences the 2006 election could have for the 2008 election.
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Last night’s Hannity & Colmes featured a segment on the behind the scenes goings on during the period Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig were held prisoner. FNC put a transcript of this up on its website…

JENNIFER GRIFFIN, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: I was involved, but there were a lot of people involved. And the people, if you start from the top, Eli Kazan, our bureau chief in Jerusalem, was intricate in this. He took great risk going into Gaza. No Israelis are in Gaza except for this poor Gilad Shalit, the soldier who was kidnapped.

HANNITY: Yes.

GRIFFIN: The Jerusalem bureau had set up a situation room where we were feeding data into them. We had bulletin boards and we were coming up with theories.

We had consultants from an IDF, Israeli hostage negotiation unit who was talking us through every meeting. We would sometimes — he would ask us who was in the meeting, what was their body language like. That person was lying.

And you know, we were getting a lot of help. Then there were the Palestinians, the guys we worked with down in Gaza. They were the best detectives. It was like a “Columbo” episode, the way they would go about. They managed to get a tape from a bank that showed the kidnappers.

CNN announced that it will be airing The Poverty Trap with former President Bill Clinton this Saturday at 8pm ET…

In the second of three special hour programs, CNN senior medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta sits down with former President Bill Clinton to discuss an issue of great concern to the world and to Clinton personally – global poverty. CNN Presents, The Poverty Trap: A Conversation with President Clinton, airs on CNN/U.S. on Saturday, Sept. 2, at 8 p.m. (ET).

The hour focuses on poverty both in developing countries and the United States – and what is being done to reduce it. From Detroit to Mexico and from rural Arkansas to Rwanda, CNN explores poverty in communities all over the world in places where the statistics are staggering, and the situation is dire. For The Poverty Trap, Clinton and Gupta discuss how these communities and others can break out of the poverty trap.

More than one billion people around the world live on less than one dollar a day, according to the World Bank. Trillions of dollars have been spent eradicating poverty over the past 50 years, but evidence suggests that little progress has been made.
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The AP writes about Kyra Phillips appearing on the Late Show with David Letterman after having that open mic gaffe earlier in the week…

CNN anchor Kyra Phillips, whose ladies room chatter found its way onto her newscast, bounced back two days later with a “Top 10 List” of excuses on the “Late Show with David Letterman.”

CNN is pleased with HLN’s progress in primetime this week vs. MSNBC in the coveted Demo…

On Tuesday:

- Glenn Beck beat Hardball in the demo last night! In fact, HLN owned MSNBC last night in the demo.

HLN beat MSNBC in every hour from 6p-11p among P25-54:

- Prime News w/ Erica Hill (156k) beat MSNBC’s Tucker (92k) by 70%.

- Glenn Beck at 7p delivered the program’s largest key demo audience to date with 275k, out-delivering MSNBC’s Hardball w/ Chris Matthews (148k) by 86%.

- Nancy Grace at 8p delivered the program’s largest P25-54 audience of the year (340k) to beat MSNBC’s Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann (187k) by 82%.

- Glenn Beck’s 9p replay was ahead of MSNBC’s Scarborough Country by 23% (169k vs. 137k) and was the hour’s highest key demo delivery to date.

- Nancy Grace at 10p out-delivered MSNBC Special: Rising from Ruin by 62% (228k vs. 141k).

- Showbiz Tonight at 11p beat MSNBC Investigates by 38% (150k vs. 109k).

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After reporting from New Orleans Monday and Tuesday, FNC’s Shepard Smith began providing coverage out of Mississippi. Smith is a native of Holly Springs, MS.

In New Orleans earlier this week, Shep said there was “No master plan for redevelopment. No master plan for infrastructure. It hasn’t been put together and there are no signs that it will be…”

Smith from Mississippi:

One year after Katrina, 16 Mississippians are still listed as missing. Four of the more than two hundred people killed here in Mississippi have still not been identified. Two of them were buried back in January, and now, the final two unidentified victims were laid to rest yesterday in the city of Gulfport. Since to this moment no one knows their names, the men are being called Will and Strength. They were given those names symbolically by city officials who say ‘Will’ represents that of the people to move on and ‘Strength’ rep-represents that of the people to rebuild… together…. And on this day in the year 2005, Mississippi awoke to a brand-new horror. The entire coastline of the Magnolia state had been reduced to ruins. The waters had returned to the sea, and in a stunned daze, they walked around these communities all along this coast, wondering how in the world they would survive. The beginning of the new normal, one-year ago today.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Chris Marlowe writes about Sony sponsoring CNN’s video podcasts…

Sony Pictures has signed to sponsor CNN video podcasts, making it the first major studio to do so.

Sony’s initial campaign, beginning Monday, is a weeklong promotion for the upcoming football drama “Gridiron Gang,” starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Sony will support its message on the CNN Entertainment site with banner ads featuring the film.